Interwar Period
The Nesarian Empire underwent significant economic, political and cultural challenges during the interwar period, between WW1 and WW2, derived from the deeply damaging and humiliating Treaty of Aemea in 1919 which completely shattered the Empire into its constituent nations, leaving the entity of the Nesarian Empire with just the land of Nesaria itself. When Emperor Adrion I came to power after the March on Capera, he immediately set about re-organising Nesaria and beginning talks with the ex-Imperial states to discuss re-unification. There were many challenges to the process of re-unification, the first one being that many of the ex-Imperial states had had westernised liberal elites put in power by the Allies following the Treaty of Aemea. After discovering that talking with these elites was hopeless, Adrion contacted underground political movements and militia, who desired re-unification just as much as him. Adrion began sending equipment and "volunteers" to these groups, but ordered them to not take any violent action until he said so. Some states never had western-backed governments put in place, or had already overthrown the ones that had been established, and these quickly agreed to re-unification, although actual re-unification would not occur immediately. Adrion had to get both the timing of the unification and the order in which the states were unified correct in order to avoid a response from the Allies. It had to be quick enough and strengthen the Empire enough to deter a response, but not ''so ''quick that the expansion appeared aggressive and threatening. He decided that the best course of action would be to unify the core region first, as this region was widely seen to be the legitimate territory of the Empire, and splitting it up was almost unanimously denounced by opposition politicians across the western world. Re-organisation of the Empire Politics Emperor Adrion I had a hostile attitude to the government of Emperor Faltas V that preceded his reign. He blamed the incompetent and corrupt ministers, and undertook huge purges of the Imperial Council, kicking out everyone he thought responsible for the defeat and imprisoning the worst offenders for treason. He filled the gaps with his supporters, which then gave him enough support in the Imperial Council to be voted emergency powers. Adrion had to go through this legal process to be seen as legitimate not only by his countrymen but by the Allies, who he knew would jump at any chance to intervene. With his emergency powers, Adrion made sweeping changes to the constitution, relegating the Imperial Council to its ancient role of merely an advisory body and replacing virtually every elected office in the Empire with an appointed one (although many elected officials were allowed to retain their posts). Adrion considered democracy to be an inherently corrupt system that breeds incompetence and apathy amongst the ruling elite, and he called democracy one of the main reasons for the defeat in WW1 and the stagnation that preceded it. Adrion was intrigued by the radical fascist movement in Italy, and he began reading fascist literature and managed to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Mussolini. However, he was more intrigued by the British Fascist movement of Oswald Mosley, whom he found himself agreeing with more on socio-economic organisation, but he dismissed Mosley's pro-democratic stance as naïve. He also began learning of the National Socialist movement in Germany, but he himself described it as "distasteful". Adrion would take the name of Nesarian Fascism for the new system he implemented in the Empire, but the end result differed significantly from contemporary fascist movements, as Adrion blended the fascist policies he learned of with the ancient neo-feudal system, resulting in an ideology that was essentially reactionary. Economy The Empire was forced to pay reparations to the Allies, primarily to the British and the Russians, although the latter collapsed when the Soviets won the Russian civil war; the Soviets of course demanded the reparations, but both the Empire and the western allies did not consider them to be the legitimate successors to the previous Russian government and therefore not entitled to reparations. These reparations were nowhere near as severe as those imposed on Germany, but they were still a huge pain for the Imperial government to pay, significantly alleviated by American loans, but this quickly turned to catastrophe in 1929 when the Americans demanded immediate repayment following the Wall Street Crash. The Empire's budget was exceedingly strained by repaying the loans on such short notice, and the following turmoil was one of the main reasons why Adrion had such strong support in the March on Capera the following year. The main problem posed to the economy, however, was not the reparations, nor paying off the war debt, but the shattering of the Empire into many countries, and the particularly egregious article of the Treaty of Aemea which stated that the passage of goods and people between the ex-Imperial states could not occur "freely or without proper processing". Prior to the Treaty of Aemea, the economies of each constituent nation were closely interwoven and interdependent, and particularly within the core region, it had made sense for efficiency to make various regions specialise in particular industries. Now that trade had to occur across borders, many of the countries simply could not sustain themselves, particularly Osdarth which had been a net food importer for many centuries and rapidly began to run out of food following the Treaty of Aemea. This led to riots in the streets and an eventual revolution in 1926, in which the western-backed elites were overthrown (and many of them were killed or imprisoned) and replaced with a nationalist government which violated the terms of the Treaty of Aemea by essentially eradicating the borders with Indissia and Estemoria and allowing total freedom of movement across them. Emperor Adrion radically reformed the economy of Nesaria and, when they came under his rule, the other Imperial nations. He considered liberal capitalism to be another core reason as to why the Empire had lost the war, and instead he organised the economy into corporate groups run by hereditary nobles but otherwise staffed by union leaders and industry experts, who were fully subject to the authority of the state. The initial organisation process caused some turmoil as the economy re-adjusted, but once things had settled down, this system was effective at directing the economy towards specific goals and shifting the focus to "provision, not profit"; i.e. providing stable and decent wages for the workers, providing the economy with good quality products, and providing the nation with resources. Of course, this system was not exempt from corruption or incompetence (although Adrion tried his hardest to root it out), and many historians (predominantly pro-capitalist ones) have argued that industry innovation was very limited during this time and the focus on production quality and worker satisfaction came at the expense of total production volume. The focus did shift towards a more hardcore productive mentality in the more desperate stages of WW2, but for the most part this was too little too late, as throughout the war the Imperial Armed Forces had the chronic problem of possessing generally good quality equipment but too little of it. Adrion also shut down all the private banks and re-nationalised the central bank, banishing all bankers of foreign origin from the country and imprisoning many native bankers for treason. Re-unification To be written